r e f u l g e n t [ groot ]

("Why are you going?! Why Why Why-"

"I'm sorry."

But how could she be?)

For seven dragging days, those were the first and last thoughts riddling his one track mind. For a full week he had nothing to fill that crown's gap in his hand other than haunting words. For every cut dealt and every drip of blood split, he had nothing more of Margaret as he did of Draco, of Quentin.

For 168 hours, all he had was Ratts, on her off days.

And on his off days, he didn't feel like meeting her in their usual stop sign to go door hopping and window knocking, because his off days and on days blurred together with the falling snow. It burned his heart, watching Ratts skip house by house with an uptempo; by day three he slept through their rendezvous. She'd forgive him of course, or just assume he forgot and actually slept through it, Ratts was always good at knowing his actions before him. 

She probably assumed he'd be too tired for their usual after the first two days of trying to live through the motions as a dead man, or at least hoped he would. 

Garrett felt so drained ever since she left, as if she never actually lived in that snow. Like she took his energy with him, and left it with spikes of terror and a silhouette of where she should've been. She should've been here, with Garrett, and Ratts, and Quentin, and Draco, not wasting in the snow and with a second family leaving them behind, not replaying in his mind with shallow words, a whisper of a ghost pulling the trigger - he couldn't take it.

("I'm sorry.")

How could she be?

By day four, he completely avoided his family, her family (were they still her family?), Ratts and Draco and Quentin. It left too much of a bitter taste leaving Ratts that second day house hunting, and he replaced it with an iron taste. He always hated that metal screen, but for one year he didn't leave it silent. For this year, it was his friend - for this year, it was Mara. It was the most he had of her, as she had his crown and he had her camera view. 

And it was like he hadn't ever lost somebody again.

It's nice to pretend sometimes.

In twenty-four hours, she cried for a family lost, and Garrett cried, as with axe in chest she ran into the snow alone. He couldn't watch another twenty-four hours, another 3 days, another 6 deaths, and the sound of bones cracking and blood being freed lasted not a second longer as he twisted that knob completely down and wasted in the silence capsizing the room of his lungs.

He couldn't breathe- ("I'm sorry.")

It all cut him rushed, Mara's leaving, replacing, bleeding, his chest faltered on the spike. His rough hands pressed into his eyes as he tried to ignore it, the pain and the silhouette and the blood and the snow and his dying garden and the bitter taste in his mouth and the flower crown's place missing from his hand and-

He couldn't. He couldn't help Mara, in that moment and for the rest of her moment's he couldn't protect a dying warrior like he swore he would. The vision trapped in his mind with her lingering words and absence; one ear, blood, axe, snow, Margaret.

Margaret.

Silence rang in his ears, deafening without the TV's rattle, and he wanted his throat to ripple. Mara wasn't even dead, somewhere she was alive, somewhere without him and Ratts and Quentin and Draco, and they were all useless. Weren't they always?

("I'm sorry.")

After 120 hours and bleeding the words through every thicket in his skull, he started to believe they had no meaning. That on that sixth day, she had no sorrow left in her marrow and she had forgotten about her first family and of her second, because she was a warrior. They did that, Garrett supposed. He couldn't understand, he just faked to himself that he would try, but he was just a gardener. A thief.

He stayed outside those next twenty-four hours. Hands in pot soil, sitting on forest grounds replacing those wallowing thoughts with anything he could, bees in his ear whispering messages Mara sent from an arena away - he had to believe in something. He believed Mara would live. And he swore never to watch that screen again, because nothing good came out of it. 

There wasn't a single person alive in that snow he wanted to see again.

Mara's talent was creating her own family, and perhaps that was the safer route. Magnolias, roses, daffodils, petunias, he could protect them from themselves at least. For forever, and for always he wouldn't see them on that screen - Mara, Ratts, Draco, Quentin, he couldn't say the same.

For forever, and for always, ("I'm sorry.") he could never protect them all.